I wrote this for the Waterloo Campus Ministries newsletter so I thought I would post it here as well! I think that hosting these community dinners has been a great opportunity for us as a house.

Walking into my house one Thursday night, I smell the strong scent of garlic and onions – the beginnings of a delicious chilli. Around a small table, a couple university students are busy chopping vegetables while discussing the proper way to cut garlic: do you use a knife or a garlic press? They spend about an hour and a half cooking together to prepare supper for about twenty of us who meet once a month to share a meal. These suppers are more than just simply eating together. They give us an opportunity to be the body of Christ. As we chop vegetables and wash dishes, we begin to grasp what it means to serve one another. As we eat dishes from India and China, we get a glimpse of a world bigger than exams and assignments. As we successfully have conversations with those who are just learning English, we gain patience, realizing that laughter surpasses language in bringing people together. We don’t always agree about controversial topics (such as the prevalence of racism or the practicality of pacifism). But in bringing people together from different disciplines and different parts of the world, we can learn how to listen to each other’s perspectives.

My time is NOT my own.

I'm reading The Screwtape Letters right now and am constantly having my perspective challenged by C.S. Lewis' wise words. For those of you who don't know, The Screwtape Letters are written from the perspective of a demon to his nephew, giving advice on the best ways to corrupt a Christian man. It provides a lot of interesting insight in the sin's and flaws of humanity. What I really find cool is that it was written over 50 years ago and its still so relevant today. Anyways, I was talking about a certain section with Kath the other day and she suggested I post it on our sorely underused blog.

"Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend's talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption "My time is my own". Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon his chattels. He is also, in theory, committed a total service of the Enemy; and if the Enemy appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for

even one day, he would not refuse. He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day the Enemy said "Now you may go and amuse yourself". Now if he thinks about his assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realise that he is actually in this situation every day. When I speak of preserving this assumption in his mind, therefore, the last thing I mean you to do is to furnish him with arguments in its defence. There aren't any. Your task is purely negative. Don't let his thoughts come anywhere near it. Wrap a darkness about it, and in the centre of that darkness let his sense of ownership-in-Time lie silent, uninspected, and operative."

I strongly recommend reading this book. Its not that long and it consistently hits the nail on the head.

A Reflection

I haven't written on this thing in awhile. I think its time I just plugged down and vomitted some thoughts, regardless of how unorganized they may be inside my head.

I think what I have learned from past experiences with community is that the first few months are for figuring out what's what. What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? What is tolerable and what needs to change as soon as possible? Is this an endeavor that actually seeks to follow God first and foremost?

I think, for better or for worse, I try to go into new situations like these with low expectations but high hopes. My heart is guarded by the realization that people are wounded from their pasts, plagued with the diseases of apathy and self-centeredness, and they are just plain busy. Therefore, people WILL let me down inevitably. And I will do the same to them. It also doesn't help that all of us are playing it by ear and really don't know that the heck we are doing.

BUT. God is bigger than our wounds, our apathy, our selfishness, our busy-ness and our lack of experience. And we love God and try to follow Him. Therefore, there is hope.

I love this house. I especially love certain moments when a spirit about this house quiets my soul and puts a tingle of joy in my spine. Its when Abram plays his guitar and sings in the living room. Or Kathleen practices piano downstairs for her volunteer position. Or Trevor makes curry and shares it. Or we all dip a spoon in my Nutella. Or Katie leads a devotion on meditation and it inspires the rest of us to get involved as a house in reaching out to others. Or Calida cleans, decorates and organizes the whole house in a weekend. Or Rebecca and Katie buy me groceries, fair trade stuff, and write me amazingly thoughtful and affirming cards for my birthday - just because they know that that's exactly what I would love.

I love that I can walk around braless and blurry eyed with tangled hair and stale, smudged mascara, in my sweats, well into the afternoon and not even think about whether or not my housemates will care.

This house has SO MANY amazing moments and undertones of love and acceptance. I believe that God is in them.

At the same time, we are nowhere near our original vision. Our house is perpetually untidy and borderline gross(which drives me nuts), we have far more ideas and good intentions than actual follow-up action, and we've been too busy, and perhaps apathetic in many cases, to bond as much as we should have in order to really build a community that can love and support eachother as a whole house and then in turn love and support our greater community as a house as well.

We have a lot to work on, which this semester has revealed to us. But we are growing, slowly but surely, and I'm so excited to see what next semester brings!

"Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it."
— Henri J.M. Nouwen

Loving someone, showing compassion, is recognizing that we are one. We are not simply a part of one body, we are one body.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

-C.S. Lewis

Lord, teach us to pray.

Help us spread the love of Jesus like madness and wildfire.

Exerpt from Community and Growth by Jean Vanier

Gloria is reading this book right now and posted this on facebook. I thought it was lovely, thus I am posting it here.

"Some communities start by serving the poor. When they begin, their members are full of generosity - though sometimes a bit aggressive in respect of the rich - and have a rather utopian ideal. Gradually, they discover the need for prayer and an inner life; they realise that their generosity is being burned up and that they are in danger of becoming a collection of hyperactives who put all their energy into external things.

Other communities start with prayer - like many of the communities of the charismatic renewal. But graduallly they discover the need to serve the poor and to develop real commitment to them. Opening to God in adoration and opening to the poor in welcome and service are the two poles of a community's growth, and signs of its health. And the community itself must grow toward a stronger sense of identity, like a body in which every member can exercise its gift and be recognised for it.

If those communities that started by serving the poor do not discover the deepening of prayer and the bonds of love flowing into celebration, they risk becoming a militant group struggling for justice. If those communities that started with prayer and adoration do not discover the waters of compassion flowing from them upon those in pain, they risk becoming legalistic and sterile.

The three elements of community - prayer, or communion with the Father through and in Jesus, presence and service to the poor, and the consciousness of being bonded in a single body - are always necessary for a community to be healthy and to grow.

Jesus called each apostle into a personal relationship of love with him, then he bonded them together in community and then he sent them out to annouce the good news to the poor.

Communities which start by serving the poor must gradually discover the gifts brought by those they serve. The communities start in generosity; they must grow in the ability to listen. In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, and to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts...

The promise of Jesus is to help us discover that the poor are a source of life and not just objects of our charity. If we are close to them we will be renewed in love and in faith."

p. 141-142

Community Quotes

The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne is chalked full of quotes related to community and Christian living. Here is an assortment of particularly nice ones:

Saying, 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do.' is an action that is not based on logic; it is based on a love that does not make sense, a scandalous grace.

We are trying to raise up an army of lovers - a community of people who've fallen desperately in love with God and with suffering people and who allow those relationships to disturb and transform them.

We must never fall in love with our vision or our five year plan. We must never fall in love with "the revolution" or "the movement"

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community but the person who loves those around them will create community.

We will hurt no one. We will love evil doers, even if it costs us our lives. And then we will see evildoers become extremists for grace. This is the story of our faith.

Community can be built around a common self righteousness or around a common brokenness. Both are magnetic. Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evil doers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinner and evil doers of our world, crying out to God, groaning for grace.

The ghettos may have their share of violence and crime, but the suburbs are the home of more subtle demonic forces - numbness, complacency, comfort - and it is these that can eat away at our souls.

Christians should be troublemakers, creators of uncertainty, agents of a dimension incompatible with society.

Drum roll pleeease!

Ladies and Gentlemen...

After many months of toil, fall through, and stress, we have finally just signed a lease for our community house!!!!!

We would like to praise God for delivering this house to us, as finding the specific house we needed was an extremely complicated process! With so many people we had a lot of very specific requirements for what was needed in the house and so finding this house and signing the lease is an incredible blessing and we're incredibly thankful! It's a big relief.
It was a very long haul. We've been searching for a house since the beginning of February, and it took 2 full months of consistant effort. We had multiple housing appointments almost every week and came close to signing quite a few other places.
We've been praying consistantly and have had our greater community praying for us too all along.
Thank you for your prayers, we really appreciate them. Please continue to pray for us as we've gotten this huge concrete block of a logistic out of the way and now can move onto the more fun and exciting phase: the dreaming!
We'll be meeting after exams to hang out, build relationships, and do some hardcore dreaming and planning for the community.

God Bless!

-Katie

"Is he safe?"
"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver, "who said anything about safe? 'course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you."
- C.S. Lewis

Some Bulgarian Poetry in Honour of the Feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius

This author, Blaga Dimitrova, was recommended to me by a friend. She is Bulgarian and the feast celebrating the patron saints of Bulgaria is RIGHT around the corner! Therefore, given the current name of this community, I felt the need to spread around three peices of Bulgarian beauty.

- Gloria

IMPERCEPTIBLY

I will go.
And the space I used to take
will be filled with air—
a liberation—
invisible and spacious.
A silent presence,
from which someone else,
unconsciously,
will take a big breath



5.

The silhouette of a love,
refracted in my memory—
rootless seaweed
carried from far away
on a warm current.

How much bargaining with circumstance,
how many devious moves,
how much struggle with ourselves
and risk and recklessness
for just one meeting.

So close—the sea, jumping out of itself,
and again subsiding to its own element.
Around us—tourists,
shrieking cutouts
on the boiling background.

Only the two of us are quiet—
a small island amid the chaos,
so stormless, almost a mirage,
set against reality,
against your ticket home,
against tomorrow.


Cassandra With A Tail

A cat stretches from one end
of my childhood to the other.
Those winters, by the hearth,
it spun a yarn of smoke into a ball.
At night, it flickered half-moon eyes
into the dark corners of the house.
By day, its tail twirled a signature
on the sky and pawed the air with grace,
gathering in its coat
the electricity of the storm
and smoothing it into gloss fur.
Wise With cottony steps.

Self possessed.
Just once she jumped out of her skin,
One peaceful evening
her tail shot up like a bottle brush
and she lept onto the chandelier
wailing like an ambulance
as if all the voltage in her fur
exploded out in flashing rage.
None of us understood the cat’s prophesy.
We hissed at her to calm down…And
the earthquake nearly flattened the house.
The oracular cat disappeared
with my childhood, forever.

But her miracle stayed with me.
Tonight, to my surprise,
she crept inside me.
Bristling with shock, I shook
and bounding back from wall to wall
yammering up a piercing cry
to call you wherever you are:
Listen. You have so little time.
Grab what you can,
whatever is dear, whatever you love.

Deep in the belly of the earth
an atomic blast is swelling up,
nurtured by electronic brains,
and produced by pulsating robots.
The green careening planet
spins blindly in the dark
so close to annihilation.
Listen. No one listens. Meow.

The Benediction

This is a video my cousin showed me a few months ago. Its not directly related to our house...but I like it :)

Prayer

A few of us are currently reading Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. I'm in the midst of the prayer chapter, which is a really nice coincidence because last night we had some realizations about the great need to pray for this project.
Within the past couple days a few things have been going wrong. Katie pointed out that we have not been praying for this as much as we should be. This has been weighing on my mind for the past 24 hours and a few parts of the prayer chapter in the book stuck out to me.

'All who have walked with God have viewed prayer as the main business of their lives.'

'In our efforts to pray it is easy for us to be defeated right at the outset because we have been taught that everything in the universe is already set, and so things cannot be changed. And if things cannot be changed, why pray? We may gloomily feel this way, but the Bible does not teach that. The Bible pray-ers prayed as if their prayers could and would make an objective difference. The apostle Paul gladly announces that we are "co-labourers with God"; that is, we are working with God to determine the outcome of events (1 Cor. 3:9)...This comes as a genuine liberation to many of us, but it also sets tremendous responsibility before us. We are working with God to determine the future! Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly. We are to change the world by prayer.'

I just wanted to share this because it emphasizes how powerful prayer can be and I've always know that somewhere in the back of my mind, but this really brought it to the fore front. So we just wanted to ask that everyone would keep us in their prayers as we search for a place to live and begin this crazy and huge task of creating a community house.

Thanks :)

-Rebecca

I read this yesterday and I found it interesting for thought especially considering what we're doing. When you're reading it though, do note that it's speaking against the very church it's describing -- the Modern church.

From Modern Christianity to a Postmodern Church

"If I am opposed to the epistemology, or theory of knowledge, that plagues modern Christianity, then I am also opposed to ecclesiology (or lack thereof) that accompanies this modernist version of the faith. Within the matrix of a modern Christianity, the base 'ingredient' is the individual; the church, then, is simply a collection of individuals. Conceiving of Christian faith as a private affair between the individual and God -- a matter of my asking Jesus 'to come into my heart'-- modern evangelicalism finds it hard to articulate just how or why the church has any role to play other than providing a place to fellowship with other individuals who have a private relationship with God. With this model in place, what matters is Christianity as a system of truth or ideas, not the church as a living community embodying its head. Modern Christianity tends to think of the church either as a place where individuals come to find answers to their questions or as one more stop where individuals can try to satisfy their consumerist desires. As such, Christianity becomes intellectualized rather than incarnate, commodified rather than the site of genuine community."

(A couple of paragraphs later...)

"The church does not exist for me; my salvation is not primarily a matter of intellectual mastery or emotional satisfaction. The church is the site where God renews and transforms us -- a place where the practices of being the body of Christ form us into the image of the Son. What I, a sinner saved by grace, need is not so much answers as reformation of my will and heart."

- Who's Afraid of Postmodernism by Jamie Smith

Prayer Request

If you are following this blog, we can only assume that you care. Therefore, we'd really appreciate your prayers. Please pray that we find a house - a duplex, or 2 apartments side by side, that fit our needs and stay under budget.

We would like to have two living spaces - one for men and one for women - which are clean, under $400 per person per month, located close to uptown and the university, with large living room spaces and lots of counter and cupboard space in the kitchens. And to avoid conflict, it would be fabulous if we didn't have to pay utilities extra. Lots of natural light would also be good. With a law-abiding, respectful, non-swindeling landlord.

Thanks!

Gloria

This is beautiful.

"engage in controversy and apply the mind of God to it."

It's quote from Greg Jao, Urbana 09.
For some reason I feel it's applicable to the stage the we are in as a house.

-Calida

Laws and Legislation

Hello all!

So I added myself as an author of this blog!

Alright, well I thought I'd put up the information regarding laws and legislation. I can't find out precisely if there is a maximum amount of people allowed in one house or even if sharing rooms are allowed (and whether people should be charged for it).

However, I did find out that if people are to rent out a house to students then they need to have a lodging license. A lodging license of a certain category is needed to house between 6 - 8 people which I believe is what we're looking at right now.

A useful link to lodging licenses is here:
Lodging Licenses

A link to the Residential Tenancies Act is here:
Residential Tenancies Act

The second link I thought may be useful and took the time to skim the index but didn't take the time to read over it!

What We Had for Supper That One Time

Two of you wanted the recipe... so here it is:

Curry Rice and Beans

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• black pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin, or to taste
• 1 tablespoon ground curry powder, or to taste
• 1 tablespoon chili powder, or to taste
• 1 cube vegetarian chicken bouillon
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 cup uncooked brown rice
• 1 can of different kinds of beans
• 1/2 a finely chopped onion
  

1. Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan over low heat. Sweat the garlic; when the garlic becomes aromatic, slowly stir in pepper, cumin, curry powder and chili powder. When spices begin to fry and become fragrant, stir in the bouillon cube and a little water.
2. Increase heat to high and 2-3 cups of water and the soy sauce. Just before the mixture comes to a boil, stir in rice. Bring to a rolling boil; reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until all liquid is absorbed. Soon before the rice is fully cooked, add the can of beans, draining and washing the beans beforehand.
   
3. Remove from heat and let stand 5 minutes.
4. Add uncooked onion.
   

Statement of Beliefs

*Note - Attempting to sum up the entirety of the basics of Christian beliefs which we founders share is tedious and awkward. One has to figure out: What points of the faith are most foundational? What points are most necessary to stress? Thus, this is only the first draft and will likely be revised next meeting, which is Sunday night. I also wanted to word it in such a way as to not exclude those of us who may be wrestling with what we believe, since, that's probably all of us.

To join this community means to believe the following statements enough to make them the basis for how one lives his or her life:

- God exists and who He is has been accurately revealed to people through the Old and New Testament in the Bible.
- The Bible is an authoritative, God-inspired source for discovering who God is and what that had to do with ancient people and what that has to do with us now.
- God is one but has three manifestations – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- God loves us. God loves everyone.
- We are in need of God to save us from the mess we made of this world and our own lives. This “mess” is called evil or sin. We cannot save ourselves.
- Jesus is fully human and fully God.
- Jesus’ death and resurrection demonstrate God’s triumph over evil.
- Even though we deserve death because of our sin, Jesus, the only perfect human to have ever lived, took our place and bore the punishment of sin for anyone who accepts this - whether they were pre-destined to accept it or not.
- The story is not over and evil has not been fully eradicated from the world. Jesus is coming back to finish the job. In the meantime, we are His followers and are working to establish His kingdom (or God’s will) here on earth.
- When one agrees to accept God's grace shown through Jesus' death, one is agreeing to live life God's way, instead of their own way, from that point on. Emulating Jesus’ life and teachings and following the principles laid out in the whole Bible is what it means to do that.

The Lords Prayer Revisited

We all grew up hearing the Lord's prayer or being told to recite the Lord's prayer but with no real concept of what we were saying. With all the repatition, it lost all the meaning that it should have to us. We realized this, so we have decided to revisit the Lord's prayer and what it means for our house.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.

In our house we recognize the awesome nature of God and we will praise and worship him regularly. His name is hallowed, holy, and should be treated as such. We are reverent of him and we show him our reverence and love through worship and praise.

Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.

The reason we are forming the house at all is to attempt to do God's will on earth. We want to be a reflection of God's kindgom. His kingdom is coming, and until this happens we will do our best to live in preparation for this. In everything we do, we want to do God's will not our will. We want to ensure this is our mentality behind our actions.

Give us this day our daily bread.

We recognize the reality of God's provision for us. We trust that he will provide our 'daily bread', whatever that may be. This also represents simplicity for our house. We need to be content with the things we need (our daily bread) and not the things we want. (a gourmet meal)

And forgive us our trespasses,

We want to be reconciled with God. We ask him to forgive us and we need to learn to accept his forgiveness.

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

We need to forgive one another because it is inevitable that there will be disagreements and misunderstandings. We should forgive in order to stop feeling negatively towards the person who trespassed against us. Holding a grudge eats away at you and we want to be able to learn how to forgive even without apologies.

And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.

We pray that God helps us to resist tempting situations and protect us from evil. We will avoid putting ourselves in circumstances we know to be tempting. We also know that Satan will try and stop what we're doing. We are earnestly trying to live for God and we need to be aware and prepared for the reality of evil coming against us.

[For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.]
Amen.

Statement of Beliefs

STATEMENT OF BELIEFS

We as a community believe in one God. We believe that God is the God of the Old and New Testament in the Bible.

We believe that drinking a special Kool-Aid drink a few seconds before midnight on January 1^st, 2012 will bring us safely to that God before the world ends moments later.

Statement of Action - Latest Edition

Statement of Action

This is an experimental community and we’re all quite inexperienced in the area of community formation. Therefore, we will spend up to September tweaking this Statement of Action and it can and should be re-evaluated at least annually after that since new occupants with new visions and strengths take over.

The goal of the Community House is to follow God by taking seriously Jesus’ teachings, and to do it as a community, holding each other accountable, learning to love each other and others the way that God loves and accepts us.

The purpose of doing life together is to have a central place of love and empowerment. It is difficult to love others when one is not receiving support in their own lives for their own struggles. The house will be a place where people will be “loved on” whether they are residents of the house or not. This means attempting to develop a home which serves as a sanctuary where residents feel accepted and cared for, so that they in turn can be empowered to accept and care for others.

The purpose of this community is not to replace God with community but to manifest God’s love through community. This project is not about worshipping community, but about worshipping God using community as a means of doing so.

Therefore, we will be deliberate about practicing community by doing the following:

House Rules

• All residents, by agreeing to live here, are thereby agreeing to be held accountable by all other residents of the house in matters of household responsibilities and Christian spirituality and its practical applications.
• With the knowledge that we are all sinners, by agreeing to live here, one agrees to approach their housemates’ struggles not with a spirit of judgement, but with a spirit of compassion. This does not mean that once a sin has become evident that the rest of the house shrugs it off as unimportant. It does mean that the house is committed to gently helping each member grow spiritually and be set free from their sins.
• As a collected group, we will establish schedules for cleaning and cooking to keep things fair so that no single person bears all the responsibility of taking care of the whole house.
• Individuals must keep their personal belongings in public areas of the house organized so that the house is a tidy place for all residents. We also wish to have an open door policy and this is easier to implement when the house does not look like a cyclone struck it.
• No sex outside of marriage. Furthermore, we acknowledge that biblical sexual purity is about much more than just abstaining from sexual intercourse and will hold each other accountable accordingly.
• As a general rule, girls hold other girls spiritually accountable and guys hold other guys spiritually accountable.
• Illegal drugs are not acceptable within this house. Residents are not allowed to use or deal illegal drugs and others are not allowed to bring them into the house.
• While drinking alcohol is a welcomed and unproblematic activity in this house, drunkenness is not acceptable among the residents of the house.
• Gossip is not acceptable among the residents of the house.
• Each resident should regularly attend a community of faith.
• By agreeing to live here, one agrees to try to love all others, especially other residents and those the house ministers to, as brothers and sisters in Christ or as people with souls whom God loves and values as shown through the example of Jesus.

Rituals

The purpose of having rituals is to make sure that we really accomplish the goals we seek to accomplish by doing so systematically.

The following will be rituals communally practiced by the house:

• Though everyone will have there own individual schedules, as a house, we will commit to assembling for food and fellowship at dinner time on the same day, once a week, and every week.
• Every day we will meet to pray.
• Weekly house meetings/Bible studies - Kathleen, edit me.
• Once a month the house will hold a party where we celebrate and eat with several different kinds of people, including those who are often marginalized in society – the lonely, the handicapped, the homeless, the elderly, etc. The dynamics and execution of each party may and should change. This is not about us attempting to rescue or counsel anyone. We do not wish to make anybody a “project.” It will simply be eating with and building relationships with a wide range of people.
• As a group, we will deliberately practice spiritual disciplines, focussing on one each month. Accountability for each individual following the monthly spiritual discipline will be especially followed out during the weekly Bible studies. The schedule for practicing the spiritual disciplines will be as follows:
• September – Simplicity
• October – Meditation
• November – Confession
• December – Study
• January – Service
• February – Celebration
• March – Fasting
• April – Submission
• May – Guidance
• June – Prayer
• July – Solitude
• August – Worship
• Once a month we will sit down together as a house to split up grocery and any other communal bills evenly. If one did not benefit from the purchase of a particular item, one does not have to pay for it.
• We will have a garden because some people think gardening is fun. It is also environmentally friendly and economical.

Focuses

The focus of all members of the community should be glorifying God with his or her lifestyle. With this in mind, the following portrays the general focuses we will have as a group:

• Following the Bible – We will be intentional about applying biblical concepts to our lives, especially Jesus’ teachings. Hence the weekly Bible studies.

• Social Responsibility – We believe we are called to remember and care for the poor and oppressed people of our nation and around the world. How this works itself out practically can be at the discretion of each individual community member since each member has different gifts and means of contribution.

• Environmental Responsibility – We believe that God calls us to be stewards of the earth.

• Authenticity – We are all broken, messed up people with unresolved issues. We believe that being honest about these things with emotionally safe people is the first step to recovery. Therefore, the house needs to be a safe environment for broken people, free from judgement and full of compassion. At the same time, we do not wish to force people to be open about their issues, if they are not ready to share.

However, when people are ready to share their issues, we agree to keep these issues confidential. The only exception to this rule is if someone is in danger. Other than that, other people’s struggles are never things to be broadcasted to anyone else – not in prayer groups, not with friends who live within the house or elsewhere. Therefore, everyone in the house is not necessarily aware of everyone else’s struggles.

• Creativity – Expressing creativity is a form of worship. Therefore, in as many aspects of life as possible, let those with even a shred of creativity in their souls show it. Beauty is important.

• “Loving On” People – When Brio Magazine’s Susie Shellenberger would get a letter from a strongly hurting girl, she would always reply something like, “I wish I could have you come here so I could just love on you!” That is what we want to do with our house – have it be a place where residents and non-residents get loved on. We believe in treating people the way Jesus would.

• Conflict Resolution – When people get together, conflict inevitably happens. We will try not to let these conflicts fester and will commit to learning together how to deal with our conflicts in constructive ways.

• Burden Sharing – We handle difficulties together.

• Utilizing community resources. We will get involved in other projects beyond those which our house initiates.

• Reaching out to our immediate community – We are not a clique.

• Growing – Knowing how inexperienced we are, we wish to be in contact with trusted older Christian mentors on a regular basis so that we can grow in wisdom from people with practical experience.

What is in a Name?

Valentines Day has been an awkward holiday in my life for quite some time now and I don't feel that this makes me a cultural anomaly by any means.

I decided to do something about it, so I looked up feasts for Catholic saints to see if there might be something else worth celebrating on that dreaded day. It just so happens that February 14th is also the Feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius! It turns out that these men are the patron saints of Bulgaria and other Slavic nations!

(If you would like to learn more about these men, click here.)

And so there was a party at my house celebrating these forgotten saints on that day and much fun was had.

Since then the spirit of Cyril and Methodius has come to represent the following:

1) Not waiting for life to happen and acting now. We don't have to wait for our lives to reach a certain point to make a difference. It just may take some thinking outside the box.

2) Defying cultural norms.

3) Redeeming something that would otherwise be unpleasant.

4) Quirkiness.

And thus, The House of Cyril and Methodius seemed quite appropriate.

Posted by Gloria